'Intelligent Design' Loses

[beam me up scottie]

YAY DARWIN !

TAKE THAT, KANSAS!


Ahem.

'Intelligent Design' Loses

Judge Rules Against 'Intelligent Design'
By MARTHA RAFFAELE, AP Education Writer

Tuesday, December 20, 2005


"Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

The Dover Area School Board violated the Constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include "intelligent design," the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled Tuesday.

And that's not all, sports fans. The Honorable Judge John E. Jones wasn't done with creationists, oh, no.
This is what he had to say to those who would force science to give it up to religion in the classroom:

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

And the losers?

Still lying their sorry asses off, I'm afraid:

The board's attorneys said members sought to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection causing gradual changes over time; intelligent-design proponents argue that it cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.

Judge Rules Against 'Intelligent Design'


Those poor folks, you have to feel sorry for them.

After all, no doubt it was an anti-God liberal who appointed that heathen Judge Jones, right?

Guess again, kiddies !



From his biography on Wikipedia : A Republican, Jones was appointed by President George W. Bush as federal judge on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in February 2002 and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on July 30, 2002.:evilgrin:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. Yay Darwin is right!

The teaching of the so-called "intelligent design" is the teaching of religion. Not just any religion, but a Christian religion. Not even just mainstream Christianity, but evangelical, Bible-banging, born-again religion. Most Christians accept science (and evolution).

These people that are into "intelligent design" not only don't understand evolution, but they also have a very infantilish concept of what they think evolution.

There's nothing wrong with religious beliefs, but to trick and cheat to force it down other people's kids' throats, in science class of all places, is sickening.

[liberalmarine06]

3. i heard

everyone on the school board there lost their jobs. does anyone know if this is true?

[beam me up scottie]

5. Hi liberalmarine06!

Welcome to DU from a liberal ex-Marine!

I do believe 8 out of the 9 school board members were voted out during the last election.

I bet ya that last one feels just a leeeeeeeeeeeeetle small right about now...:evilgrin:

[FM Arouet666]

11. Another Jar head? Welcome to DU.

Welcome to DU, there are a bunch of Marines on the board. Myself included 84-88' Twenty Nine Palms and El Toro, Semper Fi. As for your question, yes, the bums all got voted off the board. Now that is an intelligent design.

[unhappycamper]

19. Hi liberalmarine06

Welcome to DU from an army vet. :hi:

[onager]

20. (Late) Welcome From Another Former Marine

:hi:

Four years in the slovenly unmilitary Air Wing (3d MAW, MAG-11). Two years at the other end of the spectrum as a Drill Instructor at San Diego.

[kestrel91316]

2. Yayyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :grouphug: :yourock: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

[salvorhardin]

4. Yesss!

This is a victory for the enlightenment.

[oneold1-4u]

6. Christians against knowledge from all theory!

Knowledge creates theory! Theory then aids in more knowledge. One of the first theories was, likely, that if animals could eat plants perhaps man could also. Man sustained for many years on the trials of this theory without which we wouldn't be discussing this today!
The theories of who may have caused the things that man didn't, good and bad, created an unknown entity of many names and descriptions for millions of years. The more acceptable have remained to still create numerous sects and religions. This in itself is a form of evolution and it is good, in at least we no longer give death on the million different pulpits of faiths!

[greyl]

9. "if animals could eat plants perhaps man could also"?

I don't think that was ever a theory. Man didn't appear out of nowhere and drop into the midst of animals. Man became man while being an animal.

"The more acceptable have remained to still create numerous sects and religions."

They haven't remained while others languish because they're more acceptable, whatever that means.
It would be a mistake to ignore the fact that the dominant religions of today, which are only a few thousand years old, have had an expansionist culture to ride along with for those few thousand years.

I'm guessing that by "more acceptable" you mean Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.

[progressoid]

7. OK, just seeing Snoopy has the Charlie Brown song going in my head!

Love what the Judge wrote. Hopefully this attitude will spread to the rest of the country.

[semillama]

17. Not to mention that the ship Darwin sailed on

was the "Beagle."

[jgrr]

8. Not so much for Kansas

While I think the ruling has relevance for us here in Kansas, the situation in Dover was a little simpler than it is here.

In Kansas, Intelligent Design was kept in the corner because the IDolators were worried about a ruling like this one. There is a lot in Jones's ruling that will help should this come to a court in Kansas, many of the 139 pages address issues that don't arise in Kansas.

[greyl]

10. There IS a God! ;)

This is heartening news.
Thank you Judge John E. Jones.

[FM Arouet666]

12. Jesus loves you

But he don't love intelligent design. Kansas is next, those pilgrims decided to redefine science to further the ignorant claims behind (un)intelligent design. Science no longer looks for explanations in the natural world? Woo fucking Woo :woohoo:. The scriptures will guide you, so will tarot cards, chicken bones and my aunt Minnie's trick knee. What a load of horse manurer. I too was pleased with the court ruling today, but I am still pretty damn pissed off that there is a debate about a scientific theory which has mountains of supporting evidence. Redefine science? How about we redefine religion.

Religion: an irrational belief system predicated upon an ancient treatise organized by two principal groups, a follower group motivated by a fear of death, lack of intellect, and tendency to abrogate responsibility to any authority, real or imaginary. And a ruling group characterized by avarice, lust for power, bad hair and make up, the holier-than-thou Machiavellian.

Oops, that is not a redefinition, that is a fact. And speaking of bad make up, what ever happened to Tammy Faye Baker? I was thinking of making a Tammy Faye action doll for christians, I could make a fortune. Squeeze it and hear the gospel as the face slowly melts into a masquerera nightmare, Quasimodo would be proud.


Damn I am ranty yet again. :rant:

Yours in Jesus, the intelligent designer, the holy interior decorator, the inventor of the calf skin cross, the human tapestry, our lard. Amen............... :evilgrin:

On edit, seemed a bit too aggressive, I toned it down. ;)

[BiggJawn]

13. Maybe this will help us in Indiana?

Some of our members of the "House of Bubbas" spent some time this summer with some freak who showed them "Flintsones" cartoons as proof that man and dinosaurs co-existed, so now they want to bring Ignorant Design to the nexrt session.

Wonder if Jones is one of those "Activist Judges"?

[Solly Mack]

14. That's beautiful

and as an added bonus - the judge not only smacked the ID hypocrites - he smacked the Boy Blunder as well.

Now if a judge in Kansas would only....

[trotsky]

15. Best news of the day yesterday, maybe even of the year.

And I couldn't believe how wonderful it was that this guy was a Bush appointee! Fundie freepers must be having purple conniptions!

[TechBear_Seattle]

16. I still don't understand....

Every last bit that can possibly be considered evidence all points to the slow, very long term change and evolution. Chemistry, physics, biology, geology, meteorology, archaeology... millions of data point all converging towards evolution as fact. Not a single datum points towards any kind of "creator" or "designer", quite the contrary: all of the evidence points in the opposite direction.

And yet, for some reason, there are people who think the "designer" idea -- totally lacking in any kind of evidence, with extant evidence tending to disprove a "designer" -- is more rational and more believable.

What am I missing here?

[Ediacara]

18. It's a combination of "god of the gaps" and bizaro hyper-skepticism

In the past, god used to occupy the entire unknown world of phenomena, but as science progressed, god got shoved out of areas like lightening, and eclipses etc. One could easily (and probably correctly) assume that as science continues to progress god will get shoved out of all other phenomona. The IDers insist there is some sort of god-threshold though; some point at which god can no longer be shoved, a certain amount of gaps that god must exist within. There is of course no data for this other than wishful thinking and appeals to emotion. A very small amount of extrapolation however, and god of the gaps will finally give up the ghost (and I don't mean to imply that science will kill god, just that god as the personal author of observable phenomena will be killed).

BUT, IDers (ironically) can't stand the small amount of extrapolation to kill god of the gaps, and employ some radical form of hyperskepticism to defend their undefendable views, aparently unaware that belief in a god is something that should be approached with genuine hyperskepticism....

[Jim__]

21. I think the probabilistic argument is the most convincing one that they

have.

Dembski makes claims that certain events required for the evolution of life from non-life (I know this is not really an argument about the Theory of Evolution - but, the idea has been fudged) have a probability of less than 1 in 10**500. If this were true, and there were multiple of these events, the claim the life could not have evolved from non-life would be very convincing.

The problems are of course, that we don't know the probabilties, they may actually be quite close to 1; and, in these computations there are assumptions of pure random sequences - selection of sequences, changes these odds dramatically.

But, to have a mathematician tell people that it is a mathematical certainty that these things could not have happened by chance, is an extremely convincing argument, especially to those who are already predisposed to believe it.

[Ediacara]

22. Mathematicians should be jailed for lying with statistics

They know better, shame on them. You're right though, when you have literally trillions of trials going on for what is essentially infinite time, with natural selection pressuring the reactions etc, your probablity will quickly approach 1.